One thing we can all agree upon is that there isn’t much that’s funny these days. So much the more do we need the funny.
You might well ask: What’s the “connection” between funny and graphic design?
Since graphic design communicates words and pictures, and is in the service of commerce, the simple answer is that “funny sells.” Funny can be communicated in BOTH words and pictures, and also in EITHER words OR pictures! Cool! Or I should probably say “funny.” This is both funny ha-ha and funny strange, I suppose.
Years ago, I attended a semester-long seminar on the subject of what’s funny, but being an art history seminar, the focus was on what’s funny in a purely VISUAL way. There ARE ways to convey humor in purely visual terms without words. (We’re leaving out audio for the sake of this discussion, because that’s an entirely additional channel for funny.) One artist out of history who we had a look at was Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827).
There’s more about him from the Royal Academy if you’re curious and want to learn more about Rowlandson…
In the seminar, we looked at Rowlandson by way of “studying” what it is about his work that can make us perceive it as inherently, visually, funny — without benefit of verbiage.
Rowlandson was, of course, an Englishman, so notwithstanding Monty Python, leave it to the English to actually make a formal study of what’s funny.
For example, check out The Centre for Comedy Studies Research.
There also exists the International Society for Humor Studies.
I leave it to you, Dear Reader, to delve into these.
We all know there are proven health benefits to be had from laughter. And I hasten to add that there are similar benefits from fun (see my previous article on this). No coincidence that the words both “funny” and “fun” share the same root.
So, designers have always leveraged both humor and fun for making a business memorable and boosting sales. Everyone also knows this from experience. Does a laugh help you to better remember the message, is it just the joy of laughing that you remember, or does your take-away consist of BOTH, linked together in your mind?
What are the aspects of graphic design for commerce which are funnily useful? (Wow! Since my spell-checker did NOT flag the word “funnily” I looked it up on the Interwebz just now and found out that “funnily” actually IS a word)!
“Comicality” is also a word.
“Funniosity,” however, is not.
But hey! “Interwebz” is a perfectly cromulent word.
And O-M-G! “cromulent” is ALSO a word!
Ain’t English grand?
Anyway…
There is an example of a series of three direct mail postcards where I used funny to get a point across.
“Lame” or not, maybe those worked! They leveraged BOTH images and words to communicate the basic idea: Landry Mechanical are your HVAC people.
Humor Sells — Humor “Kills”
Huh? We’re all familiar with the colloquial phrase amongst comedians (with origins in early 20th century vaudeville) that “you’re killin’ ’em out there,” yes? But hey, if you’ve gotta go… and if you’re familiar with Monty Python, the legendary British purveyors of all that is (or was at one time, anyway) funny, have a look at their famous skit on the subject of the sheer POWER of funny (below). For those who are familiar, I think you know where I’m going with this, but if not, as the British are fond of saying, “Carry On.”
See this classic skit about the funniest joke in the world, from Monty Python [Warning: maybe not-so-funny for some folks these days.]
Or this additional version of the skit, in which the killer joke is encountered by law enforcement.
To look further at funny, I have enlisted a contribution from my funny friend, Stephen Donovan, of Funny 4 Funds. Who I highly recommend for leveraging the appeal of what’s funny in the service of all kinds of causes. So, I’m relinquishing the “stage” and passing the “microphone” to Stephen to say a few words about the power of funny.
[This article is authored entirely by a human. None of this was written by an AI — despite the frequent appearance of em dashes, which I have been using in my own writing for YEARS. Thank you.]
[ … “Take It Away, Stephen!” … ]
Thank you, Jan, and thank you, Faithful Reader, for joining us on this exploratory trip into the World of Funny.
First thing that must be kept in mind is that there is no one universally agreed upon example of funny: one person may find the works of Monty Python or George Carlin or Jerry Seinfeld or Joan Rivers uproariously hysterical and another person may deem them all terribly unfunny. The difficult point to accept in that scenario is that both people are right.
Funny is, by definition, a subjective thing. My contention, however, is that everyone everywhere puts an extreme importance on funny. It’s no coincidence that laughter has been called the best medicine. For at that precise moment when you’re laughing — and maybe only for that precise moment — everything is okay. You are not sick, your bills aren’t unpaid, the war/disease/heartbreak has not arrived in your life, etc.
That’s why you’ll find “gallows humor” in every police department, every foxhole, every emergency room around the world: everyone everywhere needs to laugh. Everyone everywhere needs to believe — if even for a moment — that everything is okay. I know of no surer way to arrive at that feeling than through laughter.
Now, how do you arrive at that feeling? Well, there are innumerable ways — political humor, dad jokes, gross-out jokes, physical comedy, puns, dirty limericks, you name it. There was a nationally touring successful standup comedian in the 1980s whose defining material was smashing produce onstage with a mallet.
For my money, the universality of humor is this: the best jokes are always a surprise. If you can see the punchline coming, odds are you’re not going to laugh. Being a subjective art, tastes inevitably change from one generation to the next. Because any art is a reflection of the times during which that art was made, different people will react differently to the material depending on when they hear it.
One look back at what you thought was funny during your childhood will be all the proof you need. (Eddie Murphy — a childhood comedy hero of mine — has some material from his early-80s standup sets that haven’t exactly aged as well as his legend would let you believe.)
In closing, I would entreat you to celebrate whatever it is that makes you laugh. And if you’re in the business of creating laughter, trust your gut. Know that there isn’t one particular way it HAS to be to be considered legitimate. And enjoy the process!